USA & Ireland: Little Differences #12
Midnight on New Year’s Eve
The only reason New Year’s Eve exists as a day of celebration is because it contains the last moments of the year. Those moments are just before midnight.
The entire point of New Year’s Eve is midnight. Not food, not kids, not candy, not music, not love, and not decorations. Just midnight.
Now I know I’m stating what Basil Fawlty calls the “bleedin obvious”, but here’s why. On New Year’s Day in the middle of America the most common question you hear is Did you make it to midnight?
This usually refers to staying awake until the hour that dare not speak its name, and not to whether or not you simply expired before midnight and are now a corpse awaiting a wake. In Ireland however, the question doesn’t exist. I have never heard it asked; not of five-year old children, eighty-five year old grandmothers, or goldfish of indeterminate age.
And the reason the question doesn’t exist is because everybody stays up. Correction, they don’t “stay” up, that is the point; they are simply up. It is not a question of “staying”.
In America it would be like asking somebody if they made it to dinner on Thanksgiving, if they stayed up until 5pm. God I tried but once I smelled the green bean casserole from the kitchen I realized I was partied out and just had to go to bed.
The first time somebody asked me on a New Year’s Day if I stayed up until midnight I didn’t know what to say. I thought it was a trick question. Midnight? Which midnight? Last night would be absurd, I mean is the Pope a bear? And tonight hasn’t happened yet.
Since first spotting this little difference between our countries several years ago, I’ve been canvassing Irish people to check and see if I remember things wrong, or green and hazy. To date I have only found one Irish person who was ever in bed at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and she was very sick at the time. Still, I think she should be stripped of her citizenship.
So what, if not midnight, happens on New Year’s Eve in the middle of America? In the greatest cop-out of pretending to celebrate the turn of the year, many people mark what is called “Irish New Year”, taking advantage of the six hour time difference with Ireland so they can be in bed hours before their own midnight.
Although the “Irish” celebration is in fact a very pleasant early evening event, a nice way to start your night, and the sort of casual event people in Ireland search for in vain at midnight, it is not celebrated for its Irishness but for its convenience. For life in the middle of America is nothing if not convenient.
Were Ireland a couple of hours to the west and not six to the east, the only people out drinking champagne at “Irish New Year” would be a handful of ex-pats and a bunch of starlings.
And so for many Irish-Americans in the central time zone, and indeed Americans whose ancestors hail from Portugal, Britain, Sierra Leone, and Burkino Faso, New Year’s Eve ends at half-past six in the evening, or eight pm if you’re having another drink. The wilder party people go on to other parties, which is also the beginning for those who don’t care about time zones in the rest of the world. These tend to die off around half-past ten, the New Year celebrated though not yet arrived.
Those that go beyond midnight are usually independent strong types, but even for them midnight is a chore. Yawns happen impatiently after eleven, and midnight brings great relief where everyone can now go home to bed because they have “made it” to midnight.
The opposite of New Year’s in the Midwest, I discovered some years back, is New Year’s in Moscow. At the big dinner with some Russians before going out there were multiple toasts, but we were not to mention the New Year during the toasts, because doing so before the actual New Year was bad luck. I love a nation afraid of bad luck.
And in Moscow the other time zones were rather convenient for Irish ex-pats. After the midnight frivolities in Red Square I went to an Irish pub - authentic of course - and celebrated “Irish New Year” at 3am. The next five hours are vague, but I know I was also counting down in the American Bar & Grill at 8am for “American New Year”
Don’t get me wrong, nobody in Ireland likes New Year’s Eve either. In fact what separates the human race from the rest of the animal kingdom is that all humans dislike New Year’s Eve, whereas animals think, God I’m hungry, hey look at that hedgehog. Next time somebody tells you that they don’t like New Year’s Eve, as if they are a special person in their own insular hell, tell them you know what they mean, that you don’t like horse poop.
To have a nice New Year’s Eve out in Ireland takes monumental planning - to avoid other human beings mostly, and ideally hang out with a few sedate hedgehogs. Rather than the alcohol or the reflection of a population on everybody’s horrible year of failures, I blame the ugly mess of Ireland’s New Year on hugging. Ireland is not supposed to hug, and the tension of a nation as the hugging moment approaches is terrifying.
And then there’s the fear that your mother might not let you in the door when you get home at four or five in the morning. Not because you are drunk, but because your hair is not dark, you have no coal with you, or because a different sibling has been designated to bring the New Year in, and they haven’t arrived home yet.
Some of the most poignant, or meaningless if you prefer, times ever spent in Ireland are those out on your doorstep before midnight waiting the few minutes for the New Year to arrive so you can then bring it in. Not being good with time Irish people tend to spend fifteen minutes out there to capture the second when one year becomes another.
And in the cold you stuff your hands in your pockets and shrug at each of the solitary figures outside the other doors for they are as useless with time as you. Reflecting on another year you have wasted, you are finally disturbed by Dublin’s church bells and foghorns, so you wave at the others and in you go, bringing so much hope for a year in with you that it would crush you if you knew.
That’s not something you can do at ten or eight or six O’Clock in the evening.
See Also:
• Pharmaceuticals
• uachtar reoite : ice cream
• Taking Your Turn
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